Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist of Christmas Day 2024

Christmas Day arrives. Drooping like the Deanery Christmas tree and heavy-lidded, parents, party-planners, and priests drag their weary bones across the line. Such a time we have had getting here. As we heave a corporate sigh of relief, you might be interested in another Christmas Day, the one in 1066. Let me offer you some Abbey history; we have a lot of that here. 

On Christmas Day 1066, Duke William of Normandy—lately promoted to be William the Conqueror—came to the Abbey to be crowned King of England. That too had been a lengthy business—years of plots and promises and then a storm of arrows and thundering hooves at Hastings. Strategy, submission, and then, finally, a coronation. A new and Norman king—that feels like the beginning of a brand-new story, but the words and the actions were old and familiar. William came here to tell the world that he was the king we were supposed to have—the promised king. He did not think it was a new story at all. He insisted that it was always meant to be like this. That Norman Christmas was all about a long story.

Christmas Day as a saga. Christmas as the moment when everything turns out just as it should. William might not have known it, but that’s good theology and precisely why we are here. Christmas is the day we come home. U A Fanthorpe was right when she said that this is the moment ‘when Before turned into After’. Christmas is the solution—here is finale, result, resolution—or indeed the crowning glory. Before becomes After. If you think your Christmas was a long time coming, let me tell you, you may not know the half of it.

This is what the Epistle to the Hebrews was trying to tell this morning:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. (Hebrews 1: 1)

Long ago. It started long ago. I knew someone once who always wanted to tell me about the journey he had made, love him. I would hear about the tricky camber at Cheadle, and the crowds at Crewe, about Banbury, Bicester, and Beaconsfield. I used to glaze over. There was such a very long way to go before you could arrive. Christmas is a bit like that, only there is infinitely more drama and there is glory. When the author of Hebrews says ‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors’ we are supposed to feel a great story stirring in our heads. We are supposed to picture the wind whipping up the waves when creation began. We should hear thunder of Sinai, we should stand on Carmel with Elijah as the fire falls, and we should see Isaiah in the Temple when the seraphim sing ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts’. That is just what Hebrews is thinking of when it says,

Long ago God spoke… but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. (Hebrews 1: 1–2)

The whole of the long story, all the drama and all the promises of the prophets lead to the child in Mary’s arms. All of the great purposes of God just to get us here. Not because one thing follows another. Not because one thing happened and another event came after that, but because there was promise and there was providence. This was intention. You had to come this way; you could only come this way. This was a journey in which the parts mattered and in which we reach fulfilment. The boy in Bethlehem is the culmination of a long history that was always gong somewhere. Always, in fact, arriving here, on this morning and in this place.

The marvel and miracle of crossing the Red Sea, the desolation of Rachel weeping over her children in Ramah, the hope of Isaiah, the suffering of Exile, all of it is a necessary part. And all of it needs to be factored in. It is not just a long story, it is rich, complex and full. And the point is that we are supposed to tell the whole story. The startling, interesting thing we have to do on Christmas Day is to find words for the things that are almost impossible to describe and define. That is why there are always two languages in play at Christmas. There is the story of a young woman and her husband, a journey, haggling over accommodation, and a birth. That’s the language we know, and we quickly add a donkey and, soon after that, robins and reindeer appear on the Christmas cards. These words we know, this is our tame vocabulary. Always though that other language is threatening to break in. Words about suffering, redemption, promise and glory. 

Luke’s story—the one where we learn about a manger and shepherds is mainly violins, perhaps an oboe and a cello. John’s gospel, our gospel today, well that was trumpets and drums.

…and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Here is the high drama, the language of life and light, of being and blood, of grace and truth. More than that it is the gospel where language strains at the seams. Listen to Gregory Nazianzus:

He who has no mother in heaven is born without father on earth. The laws of nature are overthrown… The Word puts on a body, the Invisible is seen…

Yes, insists Hebrews, that is absolutely and exactly what is happening and this story of the First and the Last, the God whose glory we cannot conceive, that is also the story about a birth and a baby. The story of God is absolutely a story about Bethlehem and about us. The language is the same. We have the words.

Our own Christmas preparations, Christmas 1066, Christmas 2024, Christmas as the long story—finally fulfilled. Christ as the last word and yet also the first word, Christ as the word given so that you and I have speech. Christ as a story we can learn and live. In this story is hope, in this story is anguish, in this story is suffering and in this story is joy. In this story is drama and here too is peace—we have the words for that. God with us, we have seen and heard his presence. In that baby in the manger is our past and our destiny. We have the words for that. Today we see the journey behind and what lies ahead. We know ourselves and our God in this baby in the manger. In your life and mine a candle burns and it is the light of Christ that is ours. All that because of Christmas Day. All because

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. (Hebrews 1: 1–2)

From all of us at the Abbey, a very Happy Christmas. This story is yours, believe it. This story is yours, live it. This story is ours, rejoice.